Chile Lindo owner: "The entire Mission is being attacked"

Everyone is in a flurry today about the ADA lawsuit mess currently at work at Chile Lindo. SF Weekly’s Lauren Smiley reports that owner Paula Tejeda will be closing her 16th Street empanada restaurant after her landlord was sued for not having an ADA-compliant ramp. Technically, that’s not entirely accurate, since Tejeda is still planning on using the space’s kitchen and selling empanadas there for the foreseeable future — just outside the restaurant. As of today, she is planning to be open weekdays from 8am to 10pm and Saturday from 10am to 6pm, and thinks other Mission restaurants should do the same.

“Everyone should put their tables outside and serve. I think people need to come together and put a stop to this. It is abuse, it is not sensible,” she tells Scoop, adding that other Mission spots — Pete’s BBQ, Gratitude, Balompie and more — have received similar complaints.

“The entire Mission is being attacked by this same lawyer.”

Of course, similar ADA accessibility lawsuits are nothing new to San Francisco, including the lawyer involved here, Thomas Frankovich, “one of the best known and most controversial ADA accessibility lawyers in California.” Read up on Carol Lloyd’s great 2008 Chronicle article about how the entire system works. Hell, even Clint Eastwood once remarked that the suits were basically “legalized racketeering.”

That said, there is a reason why new restaurants are forced to spend thousands of dollars — not to mention weeks/months of remodeling — on ADA compliance renovations. Like ’em or not, racketeering or not, rules are rules, right? On a somewhat similar note, Jonathan Kauffman pens a thoughtful piece from the disabled patron’s point of view.